Design Firm Dreams Up Human-Powered Floating Gym Concept for Paris

If you’re like us, you like a good full-body workout before you even take that first sip of morning joe. Whether it be running, the bike to nowhere, or a spin class, we need to drop a few gallons of sweat before hitting the office. One Italian design firm, Carlo Ratti Associati, has taken that concept a step further by producing the blueprints for what it’s calling the Paris Navigating Gym—a glass boat that would float along the Seine River and be powered by the athletic-types inside it.

(Carlo Ratti Associati)(Carlo Ratti Associati)

The 66-foot-long boat would be able to host up to 45 gym rats at a time, and the fitness machines would be the handiwork of Technogym, which manufacturers cardio, elliptical, stationary bike, step, and recline biking machines just like the ones you see in the fitness center at the Y or Equinox. Instead of just being workhorses without a purpose, the firm would also install augmented-reality screens on the boat’s walls to show the jocks onboard just how much energy they’d have put into the boat on that specific day. We can imagine some might even compete to be the king or queen of boat-runners.

Maybe the coolest aspect of the gym? It would double as a tour boat, so you could hop onboard at a specific stop and have the onboard jocks power you along the river. Or, once the boat was all powered up after a day of intense workouts, it could be taken out at night for a dinner cruise.